Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @04:19PM
from the arrr-me-hearties dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As if we needed further proof that DRM really is more trouble for publishers and consumers than it's worth, Good Old Games, the DRM-free download store that specializes in retro games, has yet more damning evidence. In an interview this week, the store's managing director says that its first venture into day one releases earlier this year with Witcher 2 was a storming success — and the version that hit the torrent sites was a cracked DRM version bought from a shop. The very definition of irony."

Yes but, there is more than one philosophy at work. Remember that Open Source came after the Free Software movement. They both have very different aims, even if they look the same in overall direction and strategy.

Free Software (which, as a term and philosophy, predates Open Source by decade), proponents of which drafted the GPL itself, does, indeed espouse that all software should be "Free Software" (which is the same as open source except this philosophical difference) and the GPL is seen as a viral way t

Sharing code and designs predates computers by many years, hell, in many ways, it goes back to the begining of recorded history.

However the term "Open Source" was, by all sources I can find, coined in the late 90s... and was rather inetionally setup as a way to break away from the more radical elements of free software philosophy.

Free Software, and Open Source both come from much older and less well defined traditions, but, they each brought their own perspectives to the table in much more explicit ways than before them.

> Sharing code and designs predates computers by many years, hell, in many ways, it goes back to the begining of recorded history.

That is correct. The basis of civilization is built upon sharing. We shared (copied) ideas and technology: wheel, mathematics, education, language, philosophy, science, etc. By doing so EVERYONE benefits. The philosophy is WIN-WIN.

Money is a great motivator and provides nice incentive BUT at some point it is no longer enough. At the end of the day the "Right Thing" to do is to share, not maintain artificial illusions of power and control.

Since copying digital media is trivial, it's significantly different than copying, say, designs for a building. You know what else civilization requires? An economic model. There's a reason communism doesn't work - it has a crappy economic model. Copyright is the working model for digital media that allows creators to get paid for their work. Your philosophy ignores the fact that people must work to create digital products, and large amounts of work typically don't get done unless there's an economic i

The Open Source philosophy defends the user's freedom who, accordingly to it, should have the right to be aware about everything a given program is doing in his system, it has nothing to do with developer freedom.

I've seen this a few times lately and am curious why this belief is held. Maybe (probably) I'm missing something but I would think that source code would be an asset and potentially valuable in a few cases:

1) A complex system that took significant time to develop. Something like MS Word. While it may not be your favorite it certainly is an assest and has a value. A word processor is easy to think of, but Word is difficult/time consuming to implement (I'm guessing).

As an example, crack open a copy of, oh, Quake 3 sometime. You'll notice that quake3.exe is a tiny little thing. The rest is the sound files, meshes, maps, cut-scenes, networking modules, etc... otherwise known as assets.

Look at it another way - the old game Dead or Alive Extreme (the one with the bikini chicks) had a tiny executable that few people actually gave a damn about, while the.3ds (3D Studio Max) mesh-models of the bikini-clad girls in the game were passed around like mad a long ti

And the perfect example of what happens when you open source your code. Doom gets opened source, enthusiasts modify it for things they want out of it: higher resolution, hardware rendering, better input controls, native ports, etc.

New people are attracted to these new features who never played the original and, would you look at that? They're buying a decades old game for the asset files to run against new code. Long-tail sales at $20 a pop at the id Store. Minus merchant fees and some minor distribution costs, the rest is pure profit by now.

Note, however, that Doom (and all other id games) was not open sourced immediately at release. Back when it was out, the engine represented the state of the art in the gaming industry, so letting any competitor use that for free wouldn't be in id's financial interests - indeed, they licensed it out to many teams (Heretic, Hexen, Strife etc), and I'd imagine there was a fair bit of money made in the process.

They did. I read that back in the Wolf3D/Doom days that one of id's company jokes was the "$50,000 XCOPY"; they'd have another dev license the Wolf3D engine for $50k and then they'd xcopy the source onto a tape.

Doom hit the scene in December '93 and the source was released in '97 - at first under the non-commercial id Software license, and a few years later it was dual-licensed with GPLv2 as well, so some of the older sourceports are closed-source.

First, the upstream licensor of the game may offer only a time-limited license. The DVD releases of Daria and WKRP in Cincinnati were delayed for a long time because they had to figure out how to replace all the music that was licensed only for the original broadcast, not for home videos to be produced later. There's a reason Nintendo couldn't just start selling GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console on day 1 of the Wii Shop Channel: it'd need a new contract with EON. And by the time that was negotiated, they ended up doing an enhanced remake instead. Likewise, Tetris DS was discontinued two years after release because The Tetris Company didn't want to flood the market with Tetris products.

Third, I'd be interested to see how video games are substantially different from movies and TV series in this respect. The film Song of the South (1946) was briefly available on LaserDisc in some markets. It has not since been rereleased on DVD or Blu-ray anywhere, allegedly because of a change in prevailing moral values among viewers [tvtropes.org].

Because there were a LOT of games that came out between 95-2001 that were Win9X exclusives that HAVE to have some sort of hardware acceleration that simply won't run on WinNT?

You see that period was the first real boom when it came to 3D graphics, you had GLIDE and early DirectX and a LOT of truly great games came out back then...problem is a lot of those companies no longer exist, or the programmers are gone and having to do a full rewrite would cost more than the software is worth to the company, and the

People want to explain things to each other. People need to explain things to each other. Without copyright a "pay to make" model would be required, and that's actually the model that makes sense. You don't have the right to work for ten years and then get paid for the rest of your life.

Are you saying that, if I make, say, some gadget, and put it on sale in my store, I shouldn't be upset if someone breaks in at night and takes it away because they "didn't think the price is worth the value", and "found other ways to get it"?

How is that anything alike? If we are going to have an intelligent discussion on the subject, then why don't we compare the situations accurately.

A more apt analogy would be if that someone purchased your product (or looked at it in the store), and then opened up a shop selling the same product for cheaper (presumably because he didn't have any R&D cost). I am not necessarily saying that is right or wrong, but if you need to "inflate" the moral dilemma to make your point, well, that says quite a bit abo

I don't lose anything if you print USD to burn in your furnace. But when you buy something with them, you are committing fraud. That fraud (giving someone worthelss paper in exchange for something else) is the crime, and the laws against counterfeiting assume that to be the reason you are printing (much like the laws against drug dealing assume some amount triggers different rules).

hmmm, I think you're jumping to conclusions here. The AC didn't say 'steal', they said 'find other ways to get it'.

Let's say you produce an action game. It's based on the principles of lots of other action games. You decide that ten years of your life is worth $1000 per copy, so sell it at that.A lot of people really like your game, but $1000 per game is too expensive for them to buy it. So a few of them get together and make a copy of your game. It's got the same gameplay elements that they liked in your game, but uses different art and a new engine. They sell this version of the game for $10.People will probably buy their version rather than your version. The price for the product you spent all that time building is now $10, not $1000.

My point is that markets set prices, not producers. And markets need competition in order to function. If you're in a monopolistic position by being the only producer of something, then the market will find a way to introduce competition. Piracy is the way the games market is introducing competition.Eliminating piracy is a matter of providing multiple methods of obtaining your product at multiple price points, not attempting to break the market by creating a monopoly through DRM.

So while a pirate may be a thief, that may be the more moral position than being a monopolist.

But you can't compete against "free" in a capitalist society. Piracy is equivalent to nicking half a factory full of widgets and giving them away. It's great for the customers but it will put the widget maker out of business, as no one's going to buy any of the other half factory full of widgets when they can get their widgets for nothing, and the widget maker has had to pay money to make them.

Once upon a time I agreed with you...until treasonous bribery turned copyrights into "forever minus a single day" and art that was made by artists long dead will be still held behind a tollbooth by rich old fuckers long after I have joined them in wormy earth. I would also add this is why we have so many great games in this legal limbo, as nobody even knows who has the rights to what anymore because a LOT of those 80s-90s shareware companies passed through so many hands, but thanks to forever minus a single day those games WILL be lost forever.

a) GP said 'consumers', which includes those who didn't pay.
b) But, as the summary says, the version that got cracked and distributed was bought in a store, so the person who bought it was also a customer. And the DRM was an (unsuccessful) attempt for the company to protect itself from that customer. So 'customer' still works. The "No True Scotsman" fallacy is still a fallacy if you change it to "No True Customer". Sorry...

As did I, and have quite a few older favorite titles from my younger years sitting in my GoG shelf.

Another thing I love is how they repackage older games to support newer OS/hardware setups.I have a 10k text file of directions I wrote up to remind myself all the convoluted steps to install Planescape Torment from the original CDs to my Windows XP/7 systems, all the settings to change just to get it to run, not to mention bypassing the disc changing handlers.

I recently repurchased the game from GoG, which consists of clicking download, double-clicking the setup, hitting next twice, and that is is. A start menu entry ready to run without having to mutz about with ini files or messing with the games directory structure.

The extras are a nice touch too, as it's packaged with the hint guide and walkthrough. All for ten bucks. Well worth the money to me, despite already owning the original release of the game.

I also purchased Fallout 1 and 2 after the original release, and at some point lost my original media.GoG was running a special at the time selling both games together for $6, which I also picked up.I could have easily torrented the games and felt little guilt, as I've already bought them both, but would have had to deal with the same installation issues and problems. Buying them this way was a no brainer.

Wow. I am going to have to buy Planescape: Torment from GoG, then. I have a two-disc version I bought for $10 years ago, and I could never get it to work to the extent of bypassing the disc checks--and I never like to carry CDs around. I want everything installed to the hard drive.

It's a good enough game I'll happy buy it again just so I can play it the way I want.

Most important thing when going through this is to decide the resolution you want to run at up front and stick to it - and also, apply all of the mods you want before saving any games. The save games usually have issues if you change resolution or mods and then try to load one.

I wasn't aware they did that! After struggling and ultimately failing to get Thief installed on my current machine, the $10 it will cost to buy it again is cheap compared to the cost of reacquiring the parts to build a functional Windows 95 machine again.

My only complaint with GOG is that I wish their distribution system was more like Steam's. It's minor, I'll admit, and probably frivolous, but there's a certain convenience about Steam that GOG just doesn't have. With that said, I have about 40 games in my GOG library, so I'm not too bothered by it.

What I love is there is no jumping through hoops or messing with cracks. i want a game on my netbook which doesn't have a DVD drive? no problem, just drag the.exe over and run it.

But I'm about to get serious hate for pointing this out but fuck it, it needs to be said...they really really REALLY need to more testing on their games! Case in point i76, that game uses the CPU clock as a timer for several in game events so this game does NOT like modern multicores, yet there is zero warning that this game is gonna require hacks and tinkering to get to run. I went through every trick on the forums before giving up and while its only $10 its still not looking good on GOG when they are selling a game with serious issues. you go to their forum page for i76 and you'll see the thing is full of people having similar issues with not being able to progress in the game. And this is far from the only one, there are several games on their forums where people are having to use my hacks because I'd run into a game and just have to keep trying different things until I found a way around the problem which i would promptly post.

So while i love and will keep buying from GOG I really wish they'd do a little more testing or at least give you a heads up if there are serious issues. But this is something I've been pointing out for awhile now folks, its not the DOS games that are gonna end up lost, DOSBox has that down pat, its the Win9X era games because so many of them used hacks to squeeze more performance out, what we need is a "Win9X Box" that will simulate say a 733MHz P3 with 384Mb of RAM and a Geforce 4 that will fake all the quirks that devs would use back then.

Oh and one final nit to pick....why is the GOG guys getting screwed on prices? When you see a game like Grimloack that both GOG and Steam has Steam nearly always has it cheaper, and of course on the sales its not even close, the last sale where i saw they both had it GOG was selling the game for $7, steam for $3. WTH devs, you punishing GOG for not having DRM? Because i find it hard to believe Valve is gonna be taking a loss on a game, sale or not. So if valve is getting the same cut all I can figure is either the GOG guys are taking a bigger slice (thus making the devs charge more to come out with the same profit on their end) or you are giving Valve better prices than you are giving GOG.

DRM may not stop piracy, but there are many people out there who aren't outright looking to pirate things. These are casual users like my mother who has tons of silly little puzzle and mind type games that she buys for a few bucks. Her friend comes over and wants a copy and she gives it to them thinking nothing of it. Low and behind it doesn't work. It's a $5 game so nobody really cares. DRM isn't about the hard core pirating community in a fully electronic world. It's about discouraging the casual user who

> Her friend comes over and wants a copy and she gives it to them thinking nothing of it.

In our company, we call that "lead gen" and seek to encourage it. In the attention economy, trading marginal costs (literally zero, in your example) in exchange for a referral is good business. Many of those referrals won't become customers. But for the ones who do, the cost-to-acquire-customer is again literally zero. It helps to have good branding and more than one product. But this isn't rocket science.

Tangentially, this explains why sites like GOG succeed, and why I'm happy to patronize them. They treat customers fairly and charge fair prices. Would I pirate a game that GOG sells? Not a chance. I'll buy it from them without thinking twice.

It a mostly wrong headed attempt to solve a serious problem, which is that a huge number of users aren't paying for your product, and could be setting themselves up for a lifetime of going to thepiratebay rather than the local retail shop.

Take the Hulu example, (or CD's), Hulu seemed great, until people realized the piratebay was still better. It was too late for Hulu, and a lot of potential customers permanently lost.

With games we have an entire generation of gamers coming up who will probably expect to b

Thanks for the blanket statement, but I'm 24 and pay for all of my media (games, music, books, movies, etc.), at least that which is not freely distributed by the creators. With only maybe one or two exceptions, all of my friends and associates do the same. Crappy people are crappy people; age makes no difference except that in previous generations, one had to be technically inclined to even know how to pirate media, whereas now it's common knowledge.

This is also not new. Back in the 80's I knew some people who genuinely didn't know it was illegal or even immoral to copy games. There would be companies that would buy one copy of a software product and then just share it around the department with everyone. Churches would buy one copy of a songbook and the photocopy it many times.

There are really two sets of people who break copyright, those who are genuinely ignorant of the laws and those who know the laws but don't care.

That reminds me of an interview I read a while back with the CEO of the Ernie Ball guitar string company. Someone in his IT department, unbeknownst to the owner, had been installing Microsoft software on more computers than they had licenses for. Rather than giving them the opportunity to fix the situation, Microsoft immediately jumped into legal action. The result is that the owner had his IT department move all of their workstations to Linux and only use open source software so that it could never happen again.

> It a mostly wrong headed attempt to solve a serious problem, which is that a huge number of users> aren't paying for your product, and could be setting themselves up for a lifetime of going to> thepiratebay rather than the local retail shop.

Even the problem is wrongheaded, because its based on the assumption that the choice is between pirating game X and buying game X in the store.

While this may be true for some subset of what pirates pirate, its demonstrably not true for the majority. Both studi

It a mostly wrong headed attempt to solve a serious problem, which is that a huge number of users aren't paying for your product, and could be setting themselves up for a lifetime of going to thepiratebay rather than the local retail shop.

The real problem is that this mischaracterisation is so ingrained that you can be modded up for saying it even on Slashdot where people should know better.

Users not paying for your product is not the problem. Or, rather, the fact that they are using it is not the problem. The goal is to maximise profit, which means making sure as many people who might pay for your product actually do. A person who pirates it but would never have bought it is not a problem. A person who might have bought it but doesn't is, whether they pirate it or not. A person who doesn't buy your game because you've priced it too high or because they don't like the distribution system is a problem, but one that's relatively easy to fix.

The problem is an industry that is devoting its attention to eliminating piracy, not to maximising sales. They'd rather have 100 sales and 100 pirates than 10,000 sales and 100,000 pirates. Yes, pirates suck, but it's a stupid business model to chase them at the expense of your customers.

Right because the company makes so much money off of the person who does not get to try the game for free and therefore not only does not buy that game, but does not buy any other games from the company.

Last weekend my girlfriend rented a blu-ray from Redbox. The largest TV in my house happens to be my monitor, and the only blu-ray player I own is a drive on my PC. I attempted to start it, but instead got a message from my player software that I needed to update my software to play the movie. I checked for an update to my player software, and it said it was up to date.

Then, I looked on the drive manufacturer site looking for a firmware update for the drive, thinking that might help. My drive model was not listed on the manufacturer site. I found another support site, but they also did not list my drive. I searched for a while and eventually found out that it was only available on a support site for a European division. I updated the firmware and tried again... no luck.

By this point, I had spent 30 or 45 minutes trying to get this to work. I got fed up, and said, "Screw it, I'll just pirate it."

It took me less than a minute to find a pirated source. It took maybe 15 minutes to download it. I spent much more time than that trying to get it working legitimately, without even counting the time to drive and get the movie.

I don't pirate stuff because I'm not willing to pay it, it's because they make it a pain in the ass to be legit.

If I know ahead of time I'll have problems with DRM for either games or movie, I usually skip them entirely.

I'm just avoiding bluray permanently. Blu-ray was explicitly designed to get around the "flaws" in DVD, that they were easy to copy and did not have DRM. The "DRM" being separate from mere copying because DRM is about making sure you do not play the media in the wrong region or at the wrong time. Blu-ray is locked down tight, it trusts nothing and no one.

DVD video actually has plenty of DRM (both content scrambling to prevent unlicensed playback and region coding to prevent geographic redistribution). The "problem" is that they're both trivial to bypass. DeCSS doesn't bother to pretend to be legit; it simply brute-forces the scramble. Region unlocking has existed for over a decade.

But when you have an inferior product when you pay for it, than when you pirate it, you will certainly pirate it. DRM makes a pain, and most times plainly impossible, to do simple things as for example transfer your media between devices. Many times I would have paid for something and ended downloading it because I couldn't find a non-DRM version to buy.

GOG proves you can sell games (probably the most pirated media) and be successful without hostilities your clients by treating them as criminals, so eve

DRM may not stop piracy, but there are many people out there who aren't outright looking to pirate things. These are casual users like my mother who has tons of silly little puzzle and mind type games that she buys for a few bucks. Her friend comes over and wants a copy and she gives it to them thinking nothing of it. Low and behind it doesn't work. It's a $5 game so nobody really cares. DRM isn't about the hard core pirating community in a fully electronic world. It's about discouraging the casual user who

But that's also an easier problem to solve than what most DRM tries to do. A simple one-time activation that just saves a "yup, I'm activated" bit in a file or in the registry would solve this, then just make the program act as a demo if it doesn't detect that sort of like an Xbox Live Arcade title. Maybe for disc-based titles do a simple disc check if this activation bit is not set, allowing full offline installation and play if someone so desires. Add a quick way to purchase directly from the demo and

Depends on the CD key. I like using NWN 1 as the best example of DRM working right, after they patched out CD-ROM protection:

You received a CD key. Yes, one can run a keygen for the client, but to get onto multiplayer, so you can play on PWs, grab modules, etc., the keys were stored in an individual database, and even if the NWN client was happy, the CD key wouldn't get you onto the online network.

Since Bioware (RIP) offered plenty of modules for the game, it was worth a legit copy for play hours and ease

Basically, yes. Password protection to get to the download page, no (unless you actually must download the program every time you want to install it). I could see an argument that a password on the ZIP file is a form of DRM (albiet probably a pretty weak form).

Nope. You will still need to use the installer. But that's a Windows problem.

Snarkyness aside: here's what I use them for.
Their DOS games run in DOSBox. Which comes with a very nice instaler that does the fiddly DOSBox bits for you. That is very nice.
So now that you have that old DOS game living in it's shiny new NTFS folder happily unconfused about the past 20 years.

GRAB THE BUGGER BY THE SHORT&CURLIES AND DROP IT ONTO YOUR TABLET OR SMARTPHONE.

if a game doesn't have DRM, does that mean you can copy the folder to another HD, and the game will still work?

By "copy the folder", I assume you mean copying the already-installed game folder. In theory, this should work fine. In practice, you're gambling. The game may have generated configuration files or registry entries that include absolute paths, so those will still point to the old location. If that old location is ever deleted, the game may simply stop working.

In short, in an ideal world with developers that care about writing clean and portable programs, you could copy and move the game in any form wherever you wanted, and everything would be fine. Is the real world, though, I can only wish you good luck.

My very OpalCalc program is portable, and completely DRM/password/key free for the paid version, so a good start I guess;)

In short, a password is a weak attempt at DRM that doesn't really do the job.

Yes, it would seem the product would at least have to "phone home" so that the company could cancel that installation, otherwise piracy sites could simply give out the password/key along with the installation exe. Since I'm against this 'phoning home' lark, I can see the dilemma for both the publisher and the end user. It's somewhat unfortunate.

An obvious plug, but I did take a look at it when I saw your first post. An interesting concept I might just have to play with later...

...it would seem the product would at least have to "phone home"...

That's the core of most modern DRM. Through some secret mechanism, the program computes a key, which is sent back to the vendor to see if it's allowed to run. If the computer doesn't have Internet access, either the program doesn't run, or the user has to pick up the phone and make the call himself. That means the vendor needs more servers, databases, security, and phone op

No, the game may have copy protection, which is not the same as DRM. Ie, it may require the CD or DVD to be in the drive.

DRM is Digital Rights Management. It controls who has "rights" to use the product. DRM products are often tied to the person who purchased it, ie, you may need an account (itunes, steam, etc). If you buy a game with DRM you usually need permission to install it, you may even need permission to install it a second time on a new computer if the old one breaks. If it's music with DRM yo

Right. I have bought a few products which require keys/passwords to be entered. I'm not sure if those products "phone home", but otherwise in theory it would seem I could pass on the product to someone else and they could use the same password and username to activate the product again (not that I would actually do that of course).

The article gives the example of Witcher 2. It says it's ironic that the most leaked version of the game was the DRM version. But is that really ironic? Witcher 2 sold 1.1 M copies for the PC in its first 7 months [strategyinformer.com]. It only sold 40 k DRM-free copies through GOG, which would the crackers most likely find to crack?

Besides, if there were no DRM for a big title like that, it stands to reason that there would be just as many if not more leaked copies available on torrent sites. What they really need to do to prove their case is get a publisher to release their AAA title on nothing but GOG, then they would be able to see the true effects of DRM-free games on piracy.

Trying to pretend piracy isn't still rampant on the PC is laughable. Yeah someone got the DRM version first and made their pirated copy out of that. Removing the DRM just means he needs less effort to share it. DRM probably doesn't do a whole deal to protect companies but if everyone went with the GOG model, there'd be no improvement. The problem is there are too many self-entitled little kids who think paying for their ISP is payment enough for content. We should remove DRM and any other restrictions from

Perhaps but I think the content industry needs to get real about the value of their products. Quite honestly the difference between a 2003 title on Gog for $2-10 vs a 2012 title for $40-60 is in my opinion frequently nil in fun factor.

Now its true that many of these titles could not be sold profitably at release for $2-10 if you assume their sales figures hold constant. I doubt they would though. As you say copyright infringement is rampant, so these things get installed on allot more systems than copies

GOG had an opportunity to support Linux, and failed to do so even when every other store has done so. The only irony here is GOG due to its size is more vulnerable than its better know competitors [Desura; Steam] and a whole host of smaller ones , even though by the nature of its store it has suitable software already available as source ports or sells them with DOSBox anyway.

I'll personally not feel any sympathy when Microsoft kill then off. Although I'm sure those that bought from them will be able to der

It's a situational irony because DRM is a tool to deter privacy, but it was the DRM version that was cracked and released by pirates, rather than the entirely DRM-free version offered by GoG. Irony! [youtube.com]

Yeah, but that assumes that pirates knew about GoG. I think it just proves how poorly known GoG is. Its like me saying that it was Ironic that Obama was elected, when it was clear that (obscure candidate X) was a better qualified candidate. Its only Ironic to most people if the other option was well known.

"The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention." Now THAT is irony!

2.Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, thus typically causing wry amusement.

I would guess that if most people were asked if the DRM-included version or the DRM-free version would be the most pirated, they would have said the DRM-free. That is the expectation. The opposite happened.

I see your point, but I would suggest it's not so much a 'took on the pirates and won' situation so much as it is a 'remove some of the incentive for piracy and discovered it worked' situation.

DRM does provide some incentive for piracy when it reduces the usability for their legitimate customers. When a publisher is releasing software that installs a rootkit or has limited installations that counts down every time you perform a hardware change, finding a copy of the same software without all that crap on it becomes much more attractive.

There's some kind of twisted logic here to make anyone think that DRM had anything to do with the rate of piracy or the cause of piracy.

Not so! For instance, many folks here would rather turn to piracy than purchase a game that uses DRM, simply because they refuse to support DRM in any fashion. But there's a more important point here: you're misstating their argument.

Their argument was not that refusing to add DRM was solely responsible for the win against pirates. You put those words in their mouth. Their argument was actually more along the lines of:1) If you make good old games available legally and conveniently,

Indeed. Morals are about doing the right thing, while anyone who's ever taken a professional ethics course can tell you that "ethics" are about avoiding the *appearance* of impropriety - i.e. not getting caught.

ahh, a moralist, my favorite enemy. i would say the same, except i would switch how you use the terms.

i feel that ethics is a simple concept, given lip service by many religions around the world. the golden rule is a very easy version of ethics. you simply cannot hurt people. Morality, however, can also include things that are unethical like the persecution of people with alternative lifestyles, ethnicity, or ideology. Morality uses aspects of ethics to lend itself credence, but in actuality, american

Morals are not about doing the right thing. They are about defining the ought-ness of something. Put another way, they tell us what is right or wrong, but they aren't necessarily about doing those things. "I ought not to steal." They're prescriptive in nature and speak towards an ideal.

Ethics define what actions are acceptable by providing rules to stay within those confines. "Don't steal." They're descriptive of what actions are considered acceptable within the culture and speak towards a societal norm, wh

1) The DRM version was widely pirated despite the DRM, and, therefore DRM served nothing but to irritate the people who really bought the game and make some DRM company richier.

2) The non-DRM version sold by GOG sold very well even without any DRM and being a year old game.

The lesson here is: If you do something people judge worthy they will pay for it, at least enough of them to make the endeavor profitable. And no, it doesn't really matter how much you could make if the whole humankind decided to pay you for it, and you are not entitled to become a billionary just because you created something.

As I said, you are right about that statement not being true, but which version would be more pirated if the DRM and the Non-DRM were launched at the same time for the same price is still irrelevant as an argument for or against DRM.

The Witcher 2 was originally released in May of 2011, not this past year when GOG finally started selling the game.

The game was available on GOG from release day. Why do you claim otherwise?

So, of course the most pirated version of the game would be one of the DRM variants, since the DRM version was available for a longer period and typically more in demand closer to the original release date.

Since the DRM-free version was available from the beginning, your argument is invalid.

But no mention of either date (original release of the game) or GOG's release are mentioned in the article

They are the same - May 17, 2011.

Anyway, sorry for interrupting the anti-DRM circle jerk with facts and logic.

In fact, the parent company of GOG [wikipedia.org] is the company that developed the game in the first place [wikipedia.org], so of course they made it available on GOG. It was available on launch day from GOG back in May 2011 [gogwiki.com]. In fact, it was available from them for pre-order before it was available anywhere else. The reason you're probably confused is because GOG replaced the regular edition of the game with the enhanced edition in April 2012, hence why it shows as having a release date of April 2012 on GOG's site.

And that's why a lot of the "stolen" content has no actual value. If I download a book, and then never read it, have I really consumed the content or taken away a potential sale? Highly unlikely.

I will tell you this - there is nothing more frustrating that buying a digital copy of a reference, and then finding out that (a) it can't be read on one of my devices or (b) I can print or extract excerpts where they are (necessary) appropriate references or (

Yes, I really bought TONS of stuff from them. They have many old games which I want to re-play, but I cannot find my old CDs anymore (or, in the case of Baldur's Gate 2, they they were already barely readable when I bought the original years ago). Especially their bundles are great, whole Baldur's Gate series or whole Neverwinter Nights collection with easy installation - great! Ultima Underworld 1+2 -awesome!

And, like many others already mentioned, even if you can find the old installation media and it is